TRANSLATION ,

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Is LAUSD EVIL? Is that a rhetorical question.?

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, Evil is the antithesis of good--especially what linguist Noam Chomsky declares is the Greater Good. Evil behavior "deprives innocent people of their humanity, from small scale assaults on a person's dignity to out-right murder." Evil is arguably inherent with the efforts being made to assure failure in public education, by districts like LAUSD, whose notoriously adversarial relationship with teachers denotes the downfall of quality in our community's schools, most of them serving students who are among the working poor majority or already deeply entrenched in the city of lost angels' skid row poverty as it stretches from blocks into miles of dissident souls betrayed by the American Dream. The wanton attack on educators and certain schools, along with the escalation of "business" paradigms counter intuitive to the mission of public education are alarming trends, as teachers passionately note in discourse and in pro-pedagogy blogs across the nation as well as in Great Britain, Canada and Australia.

However, even in light of standardized testing conspiracies and billionaires blurring the lines of Democracy's explicit altruism with potential profits, which provoke covert cost-effective techniques--i.e. increases in class size, cuts to art programs, "teacher cleansing" (not unlike outsourcing and spreading terminal diseases with infected blankets gifted to "savages" in the "new" world), we hesitate to label anything or anyone as "evil"--which psychologists and sociologists suggest is alive and well, thrivingin an unbalanced, unchecked power structure thatarticulates yet insulatesitself in aggressive urges to control and exploit others while covering up the truth or misrepresenting it. In the blinding glare of what is explicit, I listened to three of our eloquent colleagues discussing the truth about public education on the radio recently and inclined to defer to binary terms mankind has employed throughout history--- simplistic as those that distinguish light from dark .

In Dr. Scott Peck's pivotal psychological study of evil and how to defend one's self against it, People of the Lie,an explanation of why we resist naming evil accordingly is offered: Evil masters deceit, which serves its need to dominate. This conceals itself effectively;self-deception builds a fortress with layer upon layer of falsehood. Therefore, some of us are inclined to believe them oreven join people of the lie; othersactually become complicit with evil by pretending it does not exist or by making moral compromises, and those of us who defy evil are singled out for petty reprisals that are meant to destroy our lives, a patternPeck describes as symptomatic of this post-modern "personality disorder."

"People of the Lie" are evil, which is characterized by:

*Consistent, destructive, scapegoating behavior that may be quite subtle.

*Excessive, yet clandestine intolerance for criticism--it doesn't matter if it is a scathing editorial, personal opinion or an objective professional evaluation. No constructive use will come from it when narcissistic individuals or groups deflect, dismiss and delay,efficient tactics for avoiding culpability.

*Public image, appearances, posturing and pretenses are used to prop up respectability, which is crucial to the personality disorder's ongoing success. Securing a certain lifestyle and social stability helps thwart hateful feelings and vengeful motives inherently attached to evil's agenda--which is guided and facilitated by self-interest.

Karen Horwitz, author of an exhaustive and visionary investigation of corruption in public schools, Stop White Chalk Crime, echoes this insightful observation: a primary function of evil is to enforce complicity, which means witnesses will not report embezzlement, atrocities, or child abuse for fear of being of ostracized or worse.

Obviously, Peck points out that group evil is a particular concern because it is "strikingly immoral" in light of the "cover-ups" that allow the guilty to escape unscathed from committing atrocities like the My Lai massacre, Tobacco Industry's malignant misinformation campaigns and, dare I say, the widespread corruption in many public school districts. EducRAT$, profiteers and political pundits, who perpetuate the propaganda about teachers being responsible for the failure of public education, go to great lengths to hide the role administrative incompetence, abuse, fraud, nepotism, cronyism, waste, larceny, and their pervasiveness have in impairingthe successand values of some students. This is played out in a recent article about a standardized test cheating scandal that nailed over 50 schools in Atlanta when a statistical improbability emerged in the data analysis of scores. While the conspicuousness of the conspicuous scores beg a few questions about the viability of our goals as far as AYP growth is concerned, the injustice whistleblowing teachers continue to suffer despite the veracity of their reports to administration about cheating on campus juxtaposed by the absolute absence of accountability for administrators and officials involved in the scam demonstrates why most of our colleagues are inclined to ignore the unethical, even criminal behavior shamelessly erupting around them.

Evil, according to Adam and Balfour(Unmasking Administrative Evil) is "inherent in the human condition." While I am inclined to disagree, overwhelming evidence and experience contradict any doubts I have about the validity of this assertion. Although the language used here, as with Lydia Seigel's creditable research into school corruption, is curiously dispassionate; the unsettling, yet compelling tone tempers the hypothesis on several points--allowing one to comprehend how ordinary "evil" is:

*"Modern technology lends itself to rational approaches to problem solving,"However, Jonathan Swift, using a decidedly self-important and smug member of Britain's "ruling" class as the speaker, has an exceedingly "logical" solution for overpopulation and hunger in timeless satire that provides an extended metaphor for what the English did to the children of the poor Irish in the 19th century.His black humor clearly apparently anticipates what big business intends to do with poor school children in the 21stcentury, alsousing modest proposals--though they lack Swift's literary concessions to figurative language .

*In organizations people engage in "patterns and activities that result in evil" because they are unaware this is what they are doing.As we can identify at LAUSD and other districts, 'moral inversion" is enabled by public policy, contractual concessions, legislation and social codes that contradict ethical comportment.Without oversight and accountability, there is no imperative to be "ethical", much lesslegal. This also takes shape in inflexibility like LAUSD leaders moving forward with RFK in 2006 (or other poorly planned projects), despite slipping enrollment, an uncertain economy and hundreds of campuses in desperate need of refurbishment.

*"Evil wears many masks" in administrative duty, because positions of public service are often inclined to do great evil within the parameters of its ethical codes without realizing this is the case until it is too late.

Much of the data in this composition--most notably the term "evil"-- has been paraphrased and quoted from Breaking the Silence, a ground breaking Corwin Press publication ATLAS (Alliance for Teaching, Leadership, and School Improvement) professors and researchersat CSULA wrote to lay the foundation forempirical, scientific research into school-level micro-politics. The long-term patterns of principals' abuse of teachers arean issue many teacher advocates/activists say is the catalyst for the early demise of distinguished careers, an assertion Blasé and Blasé confirm and site as "a common problem that has alarmingly destructive effects on teachers as professionals and as people; one that reaches directly into classrooms to drastically undermine and even destroy. . .effective instruction and student learning" (1).These experts providea cogent text explicating the mistreatment of teachers, a "phenomenon," Gary L. Anderson states, " is robbing education of many of its brightest, most competent teachers" ( Blasé xiv).

BEFORE UTLA released their 2012 Tentative Agreement's Voting "results"---I was emailing as many people as I could, warning ...

TYPOS, Bad Spelling and the Plight of the Post Modern Writer

Please forgive my errors in the posts that I write as I post so many by other writers I know my work must seem sloppy and wasted because of the many errors you may find when reading. It is out of no disrespect to you, dear readers. On the contrary, I work so hard to assure teachers and parents have information that my eyes are bleeding by the end of most days, which tend to be when another begins.

I am an English teacher with two Masters degrees, but the antithesis of my fussy ELA mentors in that I believe my students should not be so preoccupied with grammar and spelling that it gets in the way of ideas and creativity. This worked well when I taught in colleges and high schools. It works well for me.

Please note that I do go back and revise my own work until it is right. Some may say it has to perfect to put before people and others contend these errors mar my credibility. This is true but anyone who writes and reads understands revision is a process unique to each writer.

If these were poems or short stories, I would not publish them until they were close to perfect. With editorials and news there is a sense of urgency, particularly during wartime. And we are at war. Class war is what some call it. Whatever it is, I am one of a growing number determined to fight back. I am dyslexic, ADHD, afflicted with a stigmatism and using an iPad (no keyboard yet) as I go through the motions of each day. O yeah, I never learned to type.

I am not making excuses, I am explaining how I work so you know to give me a day or two before you read if the poor spelling and errors make you crazy. Most posts are perfect going in because I didn't write them. Stats, however, suggest my editorials are popular in spite of that. So I thank you for putting up with me and urge you to join us by submitting your own posts and comments about the crisis in our schools. We must pull together and find courage to confront this threat. I think we are doing just that.